Voters Are People (Get It?)

by Jay Rosen, The Nation magazine, (c)1996, The Nation Company, Inc.

It's New Hampshire primary season, and you're having breakfast at
your local coffee shop. "Excuse me, I say, I'm a journalist. Mind
if I ask you a few questions?"
What I ask about depends on the category I put you in. If 'voter'
describes the nature of my interest, then the next day you may
find yourself saying this: "'I had questions about Dole from the
very beginning,' the 84-year-old voter said, explaining her
last-minute decision, 'and I thought, maybe Buchanan, but then I
heard last night someone, Newt Gingrich, saying Buchanan would
mean the Republicans lose Congress. So I guess it'll be good old
Dole,' she concluded with considerable resignation" (Francis
Clines, The New York Times, February 21).

If, on the other hand, I am interested in you as a citizen --
someone with a life in addition to a vote -- my question would
differ. You might emerge saying something like this: "'People
work long hours for less pay and are less available to kids,'
said Anna Willis, program director of the Upper Room counseling
center for teen-agers and families. 'It has truly fallen to the
community to raise children'"(Donald MacGillis, The Boston Sunday
Globe, December 17).

Who would you rather be? The 84-year-old voter, hopscotching from
name to name, or Anna Willis remarking on the connection between
family values and an economy forcing people to work longer for
less?

MacGillis was doing public journalism, where the purpose of
consulting "real people" is to encourage journalists to get real.
The results are meant to inform other tasks, like posing
questions to the candidates. "Governor Alexander," a public
journalist might say on your behalf, "parents feel they're
working too hard to make ends meet, and kids are suffering the
consequences. Why is this happening and what can be done about
it?"

Contrast that with the scene witnessed by Howard Kurtz of The
Washington Post after an Alexander campaign stop in New
Hampshire: "'Are we now at a critical period where it's a
question of contrasting yourself to Bob Dole almost exclusively?'
asked Carl Cameron of WMUR-TV. 'Governor, you're running way
behind in the polls here,' another reporter said. 'Realistically,
how do you make a showing?' 'What's been the failure of your
campaign so far?' a third inquired."

This is journalism for journalists, where the aim is to puncture
the facade of the candidates and induce them to attack one
another. Your role in the game isn't "citizen" or "voter" but
"spectator." See front-runner stumble. See candidate attack. See
challenger surge. See press eviscerate. After a while, you do
see: Nothing here for me.
Lost in the news of Phil Gramm's withdrawal was a telling fact:
His was a journalist's strategy. He was counting on stories about
his early fundraising to scare off other challengers. He competed
hard in meaningless straw polls so the press would
label him the conservative threat to Bob Dole. Down to Louisiana
he went in search of "momentum," a fictional construct
administered by the press. Out of touch with reality, Gramm was
in sync with common assumptions in journalism, which hold that
money and mastery of the "process" are enough to make a candidacy
real.

The hapless Gramm bought into this way of thinking. Pat Buchanan
did not. "There are people out there with anxieties and concerns
about their future and their children's future," he told the
Times on February 25. "What I'm saying is, 'Don't turn your back
on politics. Don't despair.' I'm offering them something besides
the back of my hand."

On this score, he's right. Buchanan is listening to pain, not
polls. To him politics is really about something. Indeed, the
deepest things: us versus them. He has a demagogue's touch, and
what he's touching is too important to be left to the Crossfire
candidate and the me-too responses of his competitors.

In fact, journalism should have introduced the themes Buchanan is
now surging behind, and should have installed them at the center
of the news. The Pew Center for Civic Journalism asked Richard
Harwood, whose firm specializes in public listening, to convene
fifteen conversations among Americans about their deepest
concerns. Harwood's report, released in early January and titled
America's Struggle Within, was designed to help journalists frame
the campaign as a discussion of gut-level issues. It found
growing alarm about "an economy that has turned into a kind of
quicksand, slowly pulling some Americans under, fast endangering
others."

What is more, the economic rules of society seem to be grossly
unfair to them -- from how corporations work with their
employees, to who shoulders the burden of taxes and budget
sacrifices, to growing gaps in Americans' income.
Great fear also lingers in America about the disintegration of
families and values. People say that as adults confront
increasing economic and personal demands, and neighbors and
communities turn inward, children are left to raise themselves. A
tremendous void occurs -- filled by faceless institutions,
television and its messages of violence and hate, and society's
infatuation with materialism.

This is what the campaign is supposed to be about: not the state
of the art in electioneering but the state of the Union, and what
Americans might elect to do about it. Current assumptions in the
press are that for ten months, readers and viewers will want to
be handicappers of the horse race and "cognoscenti of their own
bamboozlement," as Todd Gitlin once wrote.

Neither the levers the voters pull nor the buttons the handlers
push point to the heart of the campaign story. That lies with us,
and the fractured state of our Union, where silence about some
facts allows other facts to speak loudly, and isolation from one
another breeds a politics of fear.